Data-driven
Discovery and Design in Soft and
Biological Materials

Data-driven modeling
approaches and machine learning have
opened new paradigms in the understanding,
engineering, and design of soft and
biological materials. This Aspen Winter
Conference aims to convene theoretical,
computational, and experimental
researchers and practitioners in physics,
materials science, bioengineering, and
chemical science to advance
interdisciplinary collaboration and
understanding in data-enabled materials
and molecular design.
The promise of materials design through
machine learning is great, and
practitioners worldwide are beginning to
embrace this new modality to design and
engineer peptides, proteins, DNA,
colloids, organic photovoltaics and
semi-conductors, polymers, and hydrogels.
This event will bring together
experimental and theoretical researchers
in soft materials and biology, along with
experts in machine learning, statistics,
and applied mathematics, to define and
codify the key directions, objectives, and
methodologies for this field, and
determine how to best engage physical
modeling tools and experimental
characterization techniques with one
another and with data-driven tools to
guide and accelerate soft and biological
materials discovery and design.

Iron-based
superconductivity has been at the center
of condensed matter physics for nearly a
decade. Recent developments in the study
of the iron chalcogenides have renewed
hope of reaching even higher transition
temperatures for superconductivity.
Meanwhile, considerable progress has been
made on the understanding of their
microscopic physics. Over the same period,
the study of the venerable copper-based
superconductors has undergone a drastic
resurgence, due to a flurry of
experimental discoveries and new
theoretical understandings on the
electronic orders in the pseudogap regime.
This Aspen Winter Conference will
highlight the aforementioned developments,
and showcase the unifying themes that are
emerging from studying a diverse set of
materials. While the focus will be on the
iron- and copper-based systems, the
conference will also feature the deepening
understanding on quantum criticality in
heavy fermion and organic superconductors,
physics of spin liquids, as well as
superconductivity above 200 K that has
been reported under extreme pressure
during the past two years.

The recent advent of
numerous wide field transient surveys led
to a large increase in the discovery of
tidal disruption events (TDEs). Questions
facing us are: how can we use these events
to study the demographic (mass, spin,
binarity) of super-massive black holes in
quiescent galaxies, the stellar
populations and dynamics in galactic
nuclei, the physics of black hole
accretion under extreme conditions
including the potential to detect
relativistic effects near the
super-massive black hole, and the physics
of radio jet formation and evolution in a
pristine environment. With the near-future
increased detection rates, we need to
devise ways to manage the observational
follow-up resources and to test and inform
theoretical models for the nature of the
observed TDE emission and their expected
rates. The Aspen meeting will be used to
lay groundwork for coordinating follow-up
work (UV, optical spectra, radio, X-ray,
late-time host galaxy, continued
monitoring for repetitions...) and
decision trees (concentrate all guns on a
few brightest ones, or do less on more?)
as well as bring together theorists to
further the models on the TDE emission
mechanism.

Biophysics & Condensed Matter
January 28 - February 3, 2018

Fundamental
Problems in Active Matter

Active systems comprised
of individual microscopic units and large
assemblies convert energy, often drawn
from the environment, to produce
mechanical work. These driven,
out-of-equilibrium, systems display rich
behavior that differs strongly from the
traditional equilibrium structures.
Examples range from cell cytoskeletal
dynamics and collective behavior in
bacterial colonies to synthetic autonomous
systems. The study of active systems is
both a challenge to scientists attempting
to elucidate a quantitative descriptive
framework and an opportunity to understand
the physical underpinning of biological
systems.The past few years have witnessed
an upsurge of studies at the crossroads of
chemistry, biology, and physics. The aim
of the Aspen Winter Conference is to bring
together, through talks and focused
discussions, researchers from these
diverse disciplines to exchange viewpoints
and chart a roadmap going forward that
melds the different approaches to the
study of this exciting area. The past few
years have witnessed an upsurge of studies
at the crossroads of chemistry, biology,
and physics. The aim of the Aspen Winter
Conference is to bring together, through
talks and focused discussions, researchers
from these diverse disciplines to exchange
viewpoints and chart a roadmap going
forward that melds the different
approaches to the study of this exciting
area.

Cosmological
Signals from Cosmic Dawn to the Present

Organizers:
Rennan Barkana, Tel Aviv University
Judd D. Bowman, Arizona State University
Tzu-Ching Chang, JPL/Caltech/ASIAA
*Anastasia Fialkov, Harvard University
Adam Lidz, University of Pennsylvania
Anthony Pullen, New York University

The high redshift
Universe is an area of active research in
both theoretical and observational
astrophysics. The meeting will be broad
and cover several hot and rapidly evolving
topics in the field including:

Line intensity mapping

The 21-cm signal from the epoch of
reionization and the cosmic dawn

First UV and X-ray sources

Physics of reionization and cosmic dawn

Discoveries in these fields are likely soon,
and they will be transformational for our
understanding of the Universe. The goal of
this conference is to foster fruitful
discussions between observers, theorists,
and simulators working on these related
areas.

Quantum
Knot Homology and Supersymmetric Gauge
Theories

This conference is
devoted to the study of quantum knot
homologies and related invariants. The
name of this area of research already
indicates that this is an
interdisciplinary topic: such homologies
are of interest to mathematicians (in
particular topologists and representation
theorists), while quantum phenomena have
in principle their origin in physics.
There are communities of both
mathematicians and physicists who work on
these topics from different perspectives,
they use different tools, and sometimes
the same tools but described in different
languages. The main aim of the conference
is to bring researchers from those two
communities together, establish a common
language and explain important results to
each other, summarize the status of the
field, and specify goals and set a common
program for future research.

Advances
in Quantum Algorithms and Computation

This conference follows
two previous successful conferences in
2014 and 2016 which asked: if we had a
quantum computer, what would we do with
it? Then, quantum computers were
still hypothetical devices that
would use the quantum mechanical
properties of superposition and
entanglement to solve problems that are
likely to be forever out of reach of
classical computers. Now, there is a major
worldwide effort to build scalable quantum
computers to realize crucial,
world-changing speedups over classical
computers. Even larger quantum computers
are being placed online and by 2018, we
expect to see the first quantum computers
actually outperforming the runtime of
classical computers for certain problems.
We bring together experts from diverse
research avenues to discuss progress in
quantum algorithms, identify killer
applications of quantum computers, and
discuss key challenges in the development
of quantum algorithms for existing small-
and near-term medium-scale quantum
devices. The conference will highlight
topics at the forefront of quantum
computing, including:

Field
Theory Dualities and Strongly Correlated
Matter

Strong interactions
cause electrons in high magnetic fields to
fractionalize, currents to pass unimpeded
through copper oxide layers, quarks and
gluons to bind into mesons and nuclei, and
even space itself to emerge from more
fundamental underlying degrees of freedom.
However, strong interactions also cause
traditional perturbative techniques to
fail and ask for the developments for new
tools.
A particularly powerful approach to strong
coupling is based on the idea of duality:
two very different quantum field theories
can actually describe the same physics.
What appears to be strongly coupled in one
description is weakly coupled in the
other. Recent years have shown the power
of this idea in the context of
three-dimensional field theories, bringing
together ideas from the particle physics
and condensed matter physics communities.
For the latter, thinking in terms of
topological defects such as vortices and
hedgehogs formalized by duality
transformations contributed significantly
to understanding of phases of strongly
interacting many-body systems, in
particular of fractionalized phases
including fractional quantum Hall states
and spin liquids, complex charge ordering
patterns in Mott insulators, and more
recently symmetry-protected topological
phases. For the former, using
supersymmetric field theories as toy
models has led to an understanding of
intricate webs of dualities between
theories with different matter content and
even different dimensions, that has guided
the search for non-supersymmetric
dualities.
The last year has seen the high-energy and
condensed matter communities coming
together following dramatic developments
in our understanding of (2+1)-dimensional
field theories, connecting an astonishing
array of ideas from condensed matter
physics, particle physics and string
theory. Our conference will bring together
leading experts from both communities to
take the next steps in this exciting
journey.

The
Particle Frontier

Organizers:
Kyle Cranmer, New York University
Eva Halkiadakis, Rutgers University
Rafael Lang, Purdue University
*Ann Nelson, University of Washington
Joshua Ruderman, New York University

This Aspen winter
conference is one of the major venues for
the particle physics community to present
new data and discuss novel ideas. Topics
will include Higgs physics, dark matter,
flavor physics, and physics beyond the
Standard Model. New experimental results
will be announced, including from the
Large Hadron Collider and dark matter
direct detection. There will be an
emphasis on charting new experimental and
theoretical directions. The conference
format is designed to facilitate fruitful
interactions between experimentalists and
theorists working on a variety of topics
in particle physics.